


If We Try, We'll Get By

by xcourtney_chaoticx



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Chapel is a nurse after all, F/F, First Kiss, First Meetings, Mild Blood, Reunions, Reunited and It Feels So Good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 09:43:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12885207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xcourtney_chaoticx/pseuds/xcourtney_chaoticx
Summary: Two strangers meet during a tragedy. They come together. They are parted.They reunite.





	If We Try, We'll Get By

**Author's Note:**

> warnings: some blood, mentioned injuries/broken bones, very mild gore
> 
> So this is my first femslash piece! Thanks to the Star Trek Femslash Big Bang for giving me the opportunity to write this, and I just hope everyone likes it :)

Chris comes to slowly, blinking. Her vision is a little blurry. Her ears are ringing. Her head is pounding. Something sticky clings to her face, feeling tacky, making her grimace. _Think, Chris… piece everything together… you can do that much…_ Through the pain in her head, she forces herself to check her surroundings. Her fingers graze her cheek and come away with blood. _Oh, that’s wonderful…_ She shakes herself, orders her brain to think properly, pushes herself up on shaking arms. Horror rolls through her body.

_The shuttle…_ She’d been on a large transport shuttle to San Francisco from… where was she coming from again? Philadelphia. That’s it. She just finished her master’s in nursing at the University of Pennsylvania and now she’s heading to San Francisco to join Starfleet.

The large transport shuttle crashed. There’s the acrid smell of burning metal and the coppery tang of blood and the sound of people shrieking. It’s almost too much for Chris to handle. Part of her simply wants to black out again so she doesn’t have to deal with it, but she throws that feeling aside. She is a nurse, and a damn good one. She’s worked in research and in a trauma bay. Christine Chapel can handle this, too.

Slowly, she climbs to her feet in the shuttle wreckage. People are running to and fro, clearly unsure of what to do. Chris stops one of the men, asks, “Has- Has anyone started triage here?”

“Has anyone start- started what?”

“Triage! We need to take care of these wounded!” she shouts, “Who else here can walk? I need them here now!”

The man scurries to do as he’s told. Soon enough, Chris has a group of about twelve people who are ambulatory, and she quickly gives orders, her head not pounding quite as bad anymore. Thankfully, one of the passengers who can walk is a paramedic, so he’s pulled in to assist her in finding living casualties. Chris climbs out of the wreckage after that, seeking a good staging area and wanting to see their situation.

There are mountains in the distance, beautiful and grand, capped with snow, trees trailing down their base into thick forests. All of the trees are green and lush, just as they should be in midsummer. She can almost ignore the burning metal and screaming people to observe the beauty. _But now’s not the time for that._ Locating a suitable area for triaged victims, she grabs the paramedic (his name is Gage) and works with him to come up with a plan.

_The most severely injured patients with the greatest chance of survival._ That’s what she was taught in emergency medicine, but it’s hard. She wants to treat everyone, wants to give everyone a chance to survive, but that’s not always possible in mass casualty triage. The emotions can be processed later. For now, Chris pulls her dark hair back out of her face and gets to work.

Their first priority is to retrieve those who need the most help and most likely will survive. They need to be evaluated and treated as best they can here in the wilderness. The basic first aid items on the shuttle are of little use for broken bones and internal bleeding and concussions. The walking wounded are ordered to a staging area nearby, and some are tasked with finding useful items like straight and sturdy branches and the seatbelts from the shuttle: splints and tourniquets. Some of the flight attendants begin salvaging food and drink from the shuttle, but it won’t last them long. Chris sighs, wonders exactly how long it will take a rescue party to come for them. She leaves Gage in charge and goes up to cockpit.

The copilot is dead, his head almost completely severed and hanging over his shoulder. It’s a gruesome sight, blood all over the cockpit from open arteries, his eyes open and cloudy and blank. The pilot is alive. He seems unhurt physically except for some cuts and bruises. Emotionally, he is not well. He’s crying, struggling against his restraints, blood from his companion soaking his uniform. Chris ignores the body and sets to comforting the pilot. She carefully helps him from the restraints, helping him to the staging area. He can at least confirm someone will be there for them before nightfall. That gives Chris some hope.

Hours pass. Nightfall is still a long way off. It wasn’t quite midday when they crashed. _We can get through this._ If they could treat people like this hundred of years ago, they can certainly do it in the year 2260. She and Gage and the volunteers spend hours working on treating all the patients they had, making splints and tying off bleeding limbs and meting out gauze pads as best they can.

Finally, Chris can take a break. The sun is starting to drop lower in the sky, and Chris is ready to drop with it. She gratefully accepts a bottle of water and drinks the whole thing, then flops back onto the soft grass, ready for a nap. Someone will wake her if they need her, after all. She’s been very visible through the whole triage process. Her muscles ache and her fingers and hands are sore and that pounding is slipping back into her head. A little nap will be just the thing to take the edge off. She closes her eyes…

…and they snap back open. She pushes herself back up. _There it is again!_ It’s a metallic clank, faint but definitely there, coming from the wrecked shuttle.

“Gage, get over here and help me! There’s someone trapped!”

He hurries over along with a couple volunteers, and together they pick through the twisted metal for their victim.

“Thanks! I thought I’d never get outta there!”

Chris needs to take a moment. The girl they’ve just pulled from the wreckage is beautiful. She’s gorgeous, with richly dark skin and eyes the deepest brown. Her smile makes all Chris’s little aches and pains disappear. This girl shouldn’t be smiling. Her left leg is bent at an odd angle below the knee, clearly broken, and she’s scattered with a variety of cuts and abrasions from the crash, but overall, she’s somehow cheerful.

“Is it just your leg that hurts?” Chris asks.

“Yes, I think so,” she replies in a lightly accented voice, “and it does hurt pretty bad… but nothing else seems to be hurt.”

“Okay, well just to be sure, I’m gonna check your neck and back to make sure there aren’t any deformities and that it’s safe to move you. Just tell me if you feel any pain, alright, miss?”

“Uhura.”

“What?”

“That’s my name. Everyone calls me Uhura,” the pretty girl says.

“Okay… Okay then, Uhura, you tell me if you feel any pain,” Chris smiles.

Nothing feels wrong in Uhura’s spinal column, so Chris allows her to sit up and tells her, “I’m afraid we can’t do anything for your pain, Uhura, which is unfortunate because I do want to splint your broken leg. I don’t think the break is bad, but it is broken, so I do want it splinted and stabilized.”

“I don’t imagine it’s going to be pleasant.”

“No, I don’t imagine it will be.”

“Well then… I suppose we should get it over and done with, shouldn’t we?”

_I do like her spunk, that’s for sure._ Gage assists her, keeping the limb steady as Chris lines it with two straight sticks and ties some of the seatbelt material around to keep them in place. Uhura screams once, but other than that, she manages to tough it out much better than many Chris treated today. Chris hands her a bottle of juice when it’s all done, something to replace her lost sugar and electrolytes.

“It should be nightfall soon,” Chris tells Uhura, sitting by her on the ground, “The pilot said he made contact with someone before we crashed and that a rescue crew would be here before nightfall. I was hoping it would be sooner.”

“If something went wrong with the homing beacon, it could take them a while. They’d have to do a grid pattern search to find the actual wreckage.”

“I suppose that’s true. You sound pretty knowledgeable.”

“My sister Makena is a shuttle pilot, so I’ve picked up a bit here and there. I may have read one or two of her flight manuals, too.”

“Is that why you’re headed to San Francisco? To become a pilot?” Chris asks.

“Me? A pilot? No, I’m not planning on becoming a pilot,” Uhura replies, “I want to be a Starfleet communications officer.”

“That’s very specific.”

“Some of us have specific dreams,” she smiles, “I like languages. I like learning them. I already speak about twenty languages on a basic level, and I practice all the time. Plus I attended the Institute for Advanced Mathematics before applying to Starfleet Academy. I like maths. Mathematics is like another language, you know?”

“I don’t really… but I was never particularly good with languages. Math, that I was good at. I suppose I had to be, especially when I was studying bioresearch.”

“Why aren’t you studying that anymore?” Uhura asks.

“I-… I guess I just wanted to be a nurse instead,” Chris replies, looking down at her lap, “Guess I liked treating people better than sitting behind a microscope.”

“I hope I’m not overstepping, but… it doesn’t really sound to me that that’s what you wanted.”

Chris doesn’t reply for a moment. This isn’t really a part of her life that she enjoys talking about or even thinking about, but there’s something about Uhura that makes her want to discuss it. She looks back up, gazing into those deep brown eyes, and explains, “Well… it wasn’t what I wanted initially, no. I really did want to do bioresearch for a long time, but… but then my fiancé disappeared during a research mission to a planet called Exo III. I thought perhaps if I became a nurse and joined Starfleet I could find him again one day.”

“It sounds like you love him very much.”

“I suppose I still do… but it’s hard to say. I haven’t seen him in a few years, not since he left for the Exo III mission. Really, I guess I just want the closure of knowing if he’s alive or dead.”

Uhura nods, says, “I understand. It’s like… It’s kind of like an open wound.”

“Exactly. Maybe you should be a nurse, Uhura.”

“Oh no, not me,” she laughs, the sound musical, “That’s something I’m not good at. I generally don’t like dealing with people at their best. I can’t imagine dealing with them when they’re hurt or sick or just miserable.”

“Yeah, that can get kind of difficult, but it is a very rewarding job. A lot of people are very grateful to be helped and taken care of, so it’s easy to deal with them.”

“And the ones who aren’t grateful?”

“They’re pretty easy to deal with, too, because you don’t really have to be nice.”

Uhura laughs again, more loudly this time, and Chris laughs with her. They seem to momentarily forget the death and destruction around them and just bask in each other’s good spirits. Something just pulls her in to this young woman. She’s so beautiful and bright and warm. _I almost regret telling her about Roger. I’d like to have a chance with her._ It’s quite the stray thought, but Chris has always been attracted to all kinds of people, be they women or men or anything in between.

The sun sets a little further, and Chris tells Uhura, “Hey, I’m gonna do some rounds and check on everyone, make sure they’re doing okay. I’ll be back.”

“I’ll be right here, Chris.”

_Oh and it’s nice when she says my name._ She gets up and collects Gage to assist her. A couple more people have died, so they move them over to the pile of dead initially taken from the wreckage. Other than that, everyone seems to be doing well aside from their pain, something Chris and Gage can unfortunately do nothing about.

“Is someone coming to rescue us?” one victim asks.

“Yes,” Chris half-lies, “and hopefully they’ll be here soon. The pilot said they sent out a distress call before impact.”

“But it’s been hours!” someone else calls, “They should’ve been here by now!”

“All I know is what the pilot told us. Beyond that, I’m just as in the dark as you. We just have to stick together and start a fire to keep warm-“

“What? So we can die here?”

Gage steps in, “We ain’t gonna die here-“

“They did! All those people did!”

“Yeah, ‘cause they had massive internal injuries! If ya don’t have massive internal injuries, then you’re gonna be fine!”

Chris worries she’ll have to step in and break up a fight, but Gage tells the man to sit, and the man does so, thinking better of it. She breathes a quick sigh of relief. Together with some of the shuttle attendants, she and Gage retrieve blankets and pillows from inside the shuttle. Gage and another victim get a large fire going, large enough to keep the group of victims warm and to signal a rescue craft. They then have to help some of the victims get closer, including Uhura. The sun is going down, and it’s already getting cooler than Chris would like.

Looking around, she’s fairly certain everyone who survived thus far will survive the night if they remain stranded, and while she would certainly prefer to not be stranded all night, the knowledge everyone should live is at least somewhat comforting. She does another quick round, unable to sit still, double-checking with the pilot that someone is coming to rescue them. He says there is, and Chris can’t really refute him.

She finally sits down beside Uhura once more, exhaustion catching up to her at last. Her limbs feel heavy, her heart heavier, her head throbbing faintly once more. Chris closes her eyes and leans back against a tree, trying to force the growing headache to dissipate. A gentle hand strokes over her arm, barely touching. Her headache does recede slightly. She allows herself a soft smile.

“You should rest, angel,” Uhura whispers.

“Angel?” Chris cracks open her eye and cocks an eyebrow.

“Yeah… I thought an angel had come for me when you helped pull me out of that shuttle,” Uhura tells her softly, fingers still raking faintly up and down Chris’s arm, “I thought maybe just because I was trapped for so long, I would just naturally feel that way about whoever rescued me, but you really are an angel, Chris.”

“I’m not anything like-“

“But you are. You’ve saved so many people today.”

“There were a lot I didn’t save,” Chris reminds her.

“They couldn’t be helped then. You saved everyone who could be saved, and that’s no small feat. You’ve made sure everyone is comfortable and taken care of, and you’ve treated us all as best you can,” Uhura says gently, “Now you deserve to rest.”

“I need to wait for the rescue team-“

“We don’t know when they’re coming, angel. Just sleep for now, okay? I promise I’ll wake you up when they come.”

Chris doesn’t really want to sleep. She wants to wait for their rescuers to come, wants to see all the victims get taken away in the right order, wants to know what the hell happened to their shuttle. One look at Uhura ruins her resolve. The girl is so soft and sweet and beautiful she can’t help but just do as she said. It doesn’t help that Uhura drapes her arm around Chris, pulling her in to her side, Chris’s head on her shoulder. It feels safe and comfortable and warm. _It feels perfect._ Chris just settles in and lets her eyes slip shut. Gentle fingers dance over her arm and shoulder and hair, carefully avoiding the cut at her hairline.

After a moment, Chris becomes aware of a quiet noise she soon recognizes as humming, and she can’t help but smile when the humming soon turns to singing.

“ _Try not to get worried, try not to turn on to / Problems that upset you, oh / Don’t you know / Everything’s alright, yes, everything’s fine / And we want you to sleep well tonight / Let the world turn without you tonight / If we try, we’ll get by, so forget all about us tonight…_ ”

Chris doesn’t recognize the song, doesn’t know where it’s from, but it is soothing. The melody floats into her blood and seeps into her bones. She feels heavy and calm and so very sleepy, so much so that when Uhura sings, “ _Close your eyes, close your eyes, and relax / Think of nothing tonight,_ ” she easily drops off into sleep.

They’re still there in the morning. Everyone is on edge now, having spent a night in the wilderness and having expected to be rescued long before, and they’re beginning to turn on the pilot. Chris half thinks it’s fair, a savage thought to have against the poor man. It takes Chris, Gage, Uhura, and one of the flight attendants (named Jiang) almost half an hour to calm everyone down and keep the more able-bodied victims from assaulting him. Chris scrubs at her face when it’s all done.

“Hey, angel, help me up,” Uhura says.

“And where exactly are you going?”

“I’m going to check the communications array in the shuttle.”

“What are you going to do with that?”

“Call for help, hopefully… unless you’d prefer to stay out here forever?”

Her smirk borders on wicked. _Oh, I love her already._ Chris can’t say no to her, but she does warn her, “I think we left the copilot in there, and it wasn’t exactly a pretty sight. It was downright gruesome, in fact.”

“I can handle it. I’m a big girl now. Come on, I want to do this quickly.”

Chris helps her limp over to the shuttle cockpit, and Uhura somehow ignores the beheaded body, easier now it’s covered with a blanket. Getting her to the floor is a little harder, but they manage it. Uhura expertly removes a couple panels and gets to work. Chris sits nearby, just watching, listening to Uhura mumble to herself in a number of languages Chris doesn’t understand. _It’s very endearing, though. I could listen to her all day, in any language._ She just listens and watches.

“Hello? Hello, can anyone hear me?” Uhura calls out.

There’s nothing but static for a minute or so, and Chris opens her mouth to speak, but Uhura shushes her, calls out the same message once more, waits another minute.

“ _H-llo? Who – it?_ ”

“Hello, this shuttlecraft number 1228 from Philadelphia. We crashed somewhere en route to San Francisco. Please acknowledge.”

“ _I acknow-dge. I am –cated – southwest Color-do._ ”

“Are you able to receive a location ping from this shuttle?”

“ _Should – able to, yes. –before sending._ ”

“Acknowledged. I will send in thirty seconds.”

Uhura’s hands work furiously once more. It feels like an eternity of waiting before the man on the other end of the line responds, “ _Have –eceived ping. Will send for – party shortly. What – casualties-?_ ”

Chris tells her, and she passes on, “Out of ninety total passengers and crew we have seventeen dead, mostly all injured, many ambulatory.”

“ _– pass along. Ramirez out._ ”

“That’s that,” Uhura says, “Now we just have to wait.”

“I wouldn’t call it just that. I would call what you just did very impressive.”

“Oh, that was nothing. I just had to adjust some of the wires here, and tie it in to a wire there and then just-“

Chris can’t help herself. She swoops in and captures those lovely lips in a kiss as she’s wanted to do since she pulled the beauty from the wreckage.

“Jesus-… I’m- I’m sorry, Uhura, I just-“

“Angel, you have nothing to be sorry for.”

This kiss is even sweeter than the first, something Chris didn’t think was possible. Elegant fingers trace over her jawline, over the shell of her ear, over her brow. Chris just holds Uhura’s face, hands cupping her cheeks. Neither uses her tongue, and that’s alright with Chris because she doesn’t want to rush a good thing. _Besides, we’ll have plenty of time in San Francisco._ For now, she simply pulls away after a moment, telling Uhura, “We’ll have to do this again sometime. For now, let’s get back out to the group and wait for that rescue party. I’m sure everyone will want to thank such a hero.”

“Who’s a hero?” Uhura asks, and the way she asks is so unassuming and innocent that Chris can’t help but laugh.

“You are, silly,” she says warmly, “Uhura, you’re a hero! You just saved us all!”

“All I did was fiddle with the radio and make a call. I’m sure someone would have seen the smoke from the fire eventually.”

“But after how long? It could’ve been a week before someone saw that. More people could’ve died out here-“

“They wouldn’t have died. Not with you out here-“

“No. People would have died without quick rescue… maybe you, too. You saved all of us,” Chris tells her, leaning in once more to kiss her.

Uhura smiles at her, says, “Well… if I’m a hero then so are you, Chris.”

“I think I can agree with that.”

Chris helps Uhura to her feet, and the two of them make their way back to the group. Within an hour, the rescue shuttles appear on the horizon. The crowd of survivors cheers, but while Chris is happy to be rescued, she steels herself to discuss the dead as the rescuers will no doubt want to do. She seeks out Gage again, and together they explain everything that happened, the medical work they did, how many were dead and where they were. A switch seems to flip in her mind as they’re loading the wounded, like she’s gone on autopilot. No time at all seems to pass before everyone is ready to go. She looks around.

“Gage, where’s Uhura?”

“Where’s who?”

“Uhura. That girl I was with, the one I was keeping close to.”

“Oh, umm… I think she’s- she might be on the second shuttle, the one that just left a little while ago,” he explains, “Why? Were you worried about somethin’ with her leg? I mean, she seemed alright to me.”

“No… no, she’s fine, just-… I wanted to sit with her.”

Gage seems to understand at last and just quietly ushers Chris onto the shuttle. A doctor quickly descends on her to check her head. She really doesn’t want to be bothered by them, but she’s too upset to fight back. _I probably have a concussion. I really do need to be taken care of._ She’ll see Uhura at the hospital. She’ll see her then.

Except she doesn’t. Chris is taken care of at Starfleet Medical Center and released within a day. When she asks about Uhura at the desk, no one has seen anyone by that name. _She was taken to a different hospital._ Despair creeps into Chris’s heart. She’s starting at Starfleet next week, and she’ll never have time to find Uhura then. She doesn’t really have time to find her now. She’s got to go to the Academy and secure housing and uniforms and duties and classes and- She has a lot to do.

_Maybe it’s better this way, to have loved and lost… isn’t that what they say?_ If it’s meant to be, Chris and Uhura will be reunited, of that Chris is certain. Fate often operates in very strange ways, but it generally works out for Chris.

So, she lets it go. Chris throws herself into her work and lessons, striving to be the best so they would select her for deep space missions. She picks up shifts in the emergency room and in the labs and in the surgical center, barely sleeps and eats. One of her favorite people is a grumpy Southern doctor named Leonard McCoy. He’s a gentlemanly curmudgeon, always very polite and genteel but seemingly never happy to be so. She learns a great deal from him, learns when to be gentle and when to be firm and when a good threat might used for someone’s own good. She learns xenopathology and xenobiology and xenopsychology.

The years seem to fly by in the face of such learning. It’s incredible. The only thing that is not incredible to Chris is her being Earth-bound. She wants to go to space. She wants to see new things and places and people. McCoy tries to tell her not to worry about it because space is a “terrifying, endless, merciless void,” but the words ring hollow when she can see that he wants to go out there, too. It’s not even about Roger anymore. She hasn’t truly thought about him in years. If she goes into space now, she may find Uhura again, and that’s really all she wants now.

“Chapel, get in here!”

McCoy sounds particularly perturbed, so Chris hurries in, brushing some of her now very blonde hair from her eyes. The doctor sits behind his desk, blue eyes blazing, his face red. Chris simply asks, “What seems to be the problem, doctor?”

“We got new orders!” he fumes, “We’re goin’ into space! Both of us!”

“Both of us? What?” she rounds the desk to look at the orders, “We’re being assigned… assigned to the Enterprise! That’s the finest ship in the ‘Fleet! Wasn’t that Christopher Pike’s ship?”

“Yeah, and now they’re givin’ her to some hotshot kid named Kirk, I think I saw… only thirty-two and they’re givin’ him a damn starship! From what I heard Pike’s first officer is stayin’ on, though. He’s named Spock… half-Vulcan, half-human.”

“I didn’t think a human-Vulcan hybrid was possible.”

“Neither did I, but apparently it is, and we’re gonna be the ones to deal with him and whatever crazy biology he has goin’ on,” McCoy complains.

“Anyone else you’ve heard of that’s going to be there?”

“Sure don’t. You could probably ask around, though. I’m sure someone knows.”

Chris purses her lips but says nothing else. It doesn’t really matter who else is on the Enterprise, and she’ll be finding out in good time anyway. She’s at least glad to be going with McCoy. _And he better be glad to be going with me. Sounds like he’s gonna need all the help he can get._ A quick read-up on Kirk shows a young man, handsome and bright and perhaps a bit brash, but also one who knows what he’s doing, having been party to diplomatic missions and military endeavors. He at least seems qualified in terms of what he’s seen.

About a month later, Christine Chapel boards the USS Enterprise, her first starship, her first deep space mission. The ship is impressive, and impressive doesn’t seem to be quite the word. There probably isn’t a word that’s impressive enough to describe the Enterprise. She’s just big and bold and shining to the point she might as well be glittering. She’s beautiful. A bright yeoman shows Chris around. She’s very bubbly, a blonde girl named Janice whose cheeks are impossibly round when she smiles, and Chris likes her right away.

McCoy is already in the medical bay when Chris arrives, and he’s already terrorizing the nursing staff and grousing about supplies. _Exactly where I expected to find him._

“Well, I’m glad my head nurse has finally shown up. What’d they do, take you all the way to the Neutral Zone before bringin’ ya here?”

“I was being given a very thorough tour of the ship, doctor.”

He huffs, tells her, “Only very thorough tour ya need just now is one of the medbay, Chapel. Plenty ‘a time for tourin’ the ship later, I don’t care how cute the yeoman was. C’mon, I need ya to look over this equipment with me…”

The equipment is thankfully familiar, all variations on what they used on Earth, and she and McCoy quickly get acquainted with everything. They also meet the other doctors, Geoffrey M’Benga, Thurayya Tawfiq, and Itzel Blanco-Huerta. They’re all so polite and friendly that even the perpetually grumpy McCoy seems to enjoy speaking with them. Chris drops out, goes to acquaint herself with her nursing staff, finds the same sort of pleasant beings who want to make her feel welcome and at home.

There’s a slight commotion in the corridor, and Chris and McCoy ready themselves for their first patient.

“… sure you’re alright, lieutenant?”

“Yes, Mr. Sulu, I’m just fine except that my fingers got a little singed. Who wired that communications panel together, anyway? It was a mess under there!”

Chris freezes. _That voice…_ That voice could only belong to one person, one she’d not quite forgotten about but certainly had never thought she’d hear again. Sure enough, when Chris turns she sees an East Asian man bringing in a young woman with richly dark skin, her hands held out in front of her.

“You must be the new doctor and head nurse,” the young man says, “I’m Hikaru Sulu, one of the pilots, and this is LT Uhura. She burned her hands-“

“I can speak for myself, Sulu. I’m not unconscious!” Uhura tells him, says to McCoy and Chris, “The communications panel was on the fritz and I was working on it when it just zapped me.”

“It almost shot you across the bridge,” Sulu smirks.

Uhura gives him a withering glare he simply shrugs off, telling her, “Welcome to the Enterprise, Uhura,” and heads out. McCoy steps up and quickly examines the digits in question before saying, “All in all, lieutenant, your hands look alright. Just some minor electrical burns to the fingers. I’m gonna have the nurse here patch you up and you should be fine in a few minutes.”

“Of course. Thank you, Doctor-…”

“McCoy. No offense, but I hope we don’t see too much of each other.”

“None taken, Dr. McCoy.”

He smiles at her and lets Chris take over. Uhura doesn’t seem to recognize her, which kind of makes sense given that Chris has dramatically changed her hair color since then. _Also it’s been something like five years. Suppose I can’t expect her to remember me._ Chris just smiles and steps up, saying, “Let’s get started on these fingers, huh? Just gonna take a few minutes…”

Uhura gives her a look of far off recognition, like Chris is familiar but she isn’t sure if they’ve met or if Chris just looks like someone else. Chris kind of wants to let it keep going, but she needs to know if Uhura remembers her.

“How’s your leg?” Chris asks with a smile.

“My leg?”

“Yeah. I know it’s been a few years, but I remember you had a pretty nasty fracture of your left tibia and fibula. I tend to remember things like that.”

Uhura looks up at her, and Chris can see the gears turning. A moment passes. A bright smile breaks out over Uhura’s face.

“Chris! I-! I can’t believe it! I thought I’d never see you again! What happened? How come I didn’t see you at the hospital?”

“We were sent to different hospitals. I ended up at Starfleet Medical Center, and you ended up somewhere else. By the time they released me, I had to go check in for the Academy, and… well, it sounds awful to say it out loud, but I just didn’t have time to go to every hospital. I hope you weren’t upset with me, Uhura.”

“I was a little, at first,” Uhura admits, “but I got over it pretty quick. Thought maybe we were just going to be ships in the night, and I could deal with that. God, I never thought I’d see you here!”

“Me, neither. I never really forgot you, y’know. You’ve always been there, in the back of my mind… I never really gave up hope that I’d see you again, I guess.”

“Must be why you’re here. The universe knew and it brought us back together.”

The thought warms Chris’s heart. She quickly finishes up treating Uhura’s hands, and once she’s done, Uhura steals a quick kiss from her, whispers, “Why don’t I show you around the ship later?”

“I think I would like that very much, lieutenant. Any ideas what you’ll show me first on the tour?” Chris smirks.

“I have a pretty good idea. Why don’t you meet me in the main mess for dinner at 1900? We can get a bite to eat and then get going.”

Chris agrees, and Uhura goes back up to the bridge.

Dinner doesn’t come soon enough. Uhura is wonderful as ever, introducing Chris to her friends as her one time savior, seeming to delight in making Chris blush. Afterwards, they head down a long corridor, Uhura gently teasing Chris about her blushing and embarrassment.

“Where are we going, Uhura?”

“To the most important place for you know on the ship, of course.”

“And what is that?”

Uhura stops at a door, keys in a code, and the door slides open. She turns to look at Chris and, with a wicked smile, says, “My quarters.”

Chris follows her in, and as soon as the door closes, she pushes Uhura up against it, kissing her fiercely. Uhura is wonderfully pliant but by no means passive, kissing back with just as much passion. Chris’s hands roam her body, trying memorize every curve, not afraid of hurting her this time around. Uhura’s mouth is perfect, as perfect as the rest of her. It’s the best kiss Chris has ever had, full of passion and fire and longing. They nip and lick and caress, and Uhura finally trails her lips away from Chris’s to tend to her throat. Chris gives a quiet moan.

“Forgot to tell you something,” Uhura says, lips brushing over Chris’s skin.

“Nothing bad, I hope.”

“No, nothing bad. Just… I’d like for you to call me by my name.”

“Uhura’s not your name?”

“Not my given name. My given name is Nyota.”

Chris says, “Then I’ll call you Nyota,” and leans down to kiss Nyota again.

Their reunion is a perfect one… and, to both their delight, it lasts until morning.


End file.
